My Shipmate Louise, Volume II

I should but tease you by attempting to narrate the passage of the hours from this point. All day long it rained; no air stirred, and the leaden sea flattened into sulky heavings wide apart, on which the hull rolled quietly. Possessing but the clothes in which I stood, I fetched an oilskin from the 'tweendecks to save me from a wet skin, and thus attired made several journeys into the foretop, where I lingered, straining my gaze all around into the shrouded horizon till my eyeballs seemed to crack to the stretching of my vision. Sometimes, when in the deck-house, I would start to my feet on fancying I heard a sound of oars, but it was never more than some sobbing wash of swell, or some stir of the rudder swayed on its pintles by the movement of the fabric. There was plenty of stuff below with which to produce smoke, but no preparation for such a signal could be made whilst it rained, nor could any purpose be served by having the materials ready until the weather cleared, and wind blew, and something hove into sight.

Miss Temple's miserable dejection grieved me bitterly. The horror of our situation seemed to increase upon her, and say what I might I never succeeded in coaxing the least air of spirit into her face. It was distressing beyond language to see this haughty, beautiful, high-born woman, accustomed to every refinement and elegance that was to be purchased or contrived, reduced to such a pass as this: languidly putting her lips to the rough pannikin in which I would hand her a draught of wine and water; scarcely able to bite the flinty biscuit which, with marmalade and cheese, formed our repasts; sitting for weary long spells at a time motionless in a corner of the rough structure, her eyelids heavy, her gaze fixed and listless, her lips parted, with all their old haughty expression of imperious resolution gone from them, her fingers locked upon her lap, her breast now and again rising and falling with hysteric swiftness to some wrenching emotion which yet found her face marble-like, and her eyes without their familiar impassioned glow.